Electric companies work to restore power to thousands

A lineman from Mirarchi Bros.Inc. of Warminster Bucks County works to restore electric outages in Chester County.
Photo by Kevin Hoffman, The Mercury
Wed. 2-5-14

With hundreds of thousands of customers still without power, crews from PECO and Met-Ed worked through the night and day Thursday to restore power after an ice storm tore through the area on Wednesday.

Approximately 123,000 PECO customers in Chester County remained without power Thursday. More than 128,000 residents in Montgomery County were in the dark as well.

Debbie Yemenijian, a spokesperson for PECO, said 220,000 customers had their power restored overnight but there were still approximately 426,000 customers without power in the PECO coverage area.

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The overnight push meant crews from PECO and other companies were thrown into high gear.

“Overall, we have 3,500 personnel in the field and working behind the scenes,” Yemenijian said.

According to Yemenijian, crews from companies in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and New Brunswick, Canada, were called in for help.

“We are expecting most of the power to be restored by Friday night,” she said. “But the hardest hit areas may not see power back on until Sunday at 11 p.m.”

For some residents, living without power for several days is amplified by downed wires and fallen trees creating dangerous situations around their homes.

Yemenijian cautions residents to stay away from downed wires.

“We are asking our customers to stay safe,” she said. “We are striving to get people back with lights on as soon as we can.”

Ironically, one of the buildings where lights were not on was an administrative building at the Limerick Generating Station, according to Dana Melia, the Communications Manager at the plant. Melia said everything else was working at full power and PECO crews were on scene to get power back to the building soon.

For residents who want an update from PECO, Yemenijian said calling 1-800-841-4141 will have that information.

The mass power outage during the storm prompted a dramatic uptick in calls to the Montgomery County Emergency Operations Center, county Commissioners Chairman Josh Shapiro said Thursday.

On Feb. 5, Shapiro said the center fielded 7,915 calls, almost twice as many of the 2,400 average.

“During the height of Sandy, on Oct. 29, 2012, the center received 6,683 calls,” he said.

But Shapiro warned, despite the power coming back to residents, the storm recovery is not over. With temperatures dropping overnight, he encouraged residents to use the 24-hour shelter at the Hatboro Horsham High School.

“(Wednesday night) there were only 70 people there,” he said.

The Montgomery County Department of Public Safety has an updated list of warming centers on its Facebook page.

The situation for Met-Ed customers is a little brighter.

Met-Ed reported less than one percent of customers in Berks and Montgomery counties were still without power Thursday.

“We have almost 2,000 people in the field working around the clock,” said Chris Eck, a spokesperson for Met-Ed and First Energy.

Eck credited the pre-storm preparation with the quickly dwindling numbers.

“We staged crews that were ready to go before the storm started,” he said.

Met-Ed said 61 percent of Warwick Township, its only district in Chester County, was still without power.

Electric companies are not alone in working to get residents powered up.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation focused crews on removing fallen trees that were blocking state roadways.

“We did not remove trees that had wires down near them,” Charles Metzger said.

Metzger, a representative for the department, said his crews have seen widespread damage.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said after an aerial survey of the storm’s aftermath that crews put a priority on restoring electricity to hospitals and nursing homes, and to communications facilities and sewer plants.

“This storm is in some respects as bad or maybe even worse than Hurricane Sandy,” he said during an appearance in the Philadelphia suburbs. He said a shipment of electrical generators from the federal government was on its way to Pennsylvania.

He said he was urging electric utilities “to move as fast as they can, but they have to do it within the parameters of safety.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

About the Author

Caroline Sweeney formerly worked as the police reporter for the Pottstown Mercury. She is no longer on staff. If you wish to contact anyone at The Mercury about her stories, please call our main number at 610-323-3000 and ask for the editorial department. Reach the author at csweeney@pottsmerc.com
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